T
tonyrey
Guest
If anyone sincerely believes Christ is not divine it is absurd to think he or she risks salvation.
If God both created the Universe and cares about humans, why did he make it so large?
- Status
S
StAnastasia
Guest
Well spotted!
Darn.
Cassini, I would rather spend eternity in hell than five minutes in the presence of a God who would condemn most of the world’s population to perdition simply on the strength of what they believe or do not believe.
Wow – 99%. I didn’t know soteriology was subject to the laws of probability, but it’s an interesting proposal!
Are you opposed to more generous rules for heavenly admittance?
S
StAnastasia
Guest
Right. It’s not even clear whether “salvation” in the traditional sense is intelligible in a post-Aristotelian-Ptolemaic world.
R
ricmat
Guest
If “salvation” can only be understood by academic elites who invoke pre, and “post-Aristotelian-Ptolemaic” world views, then certainly most of us are doomed.
Rather, I believe that you are deep in the wilderness, and have lost your faith.
Pray for help that you will find your way back.
C
cassini
Guest
I do hope hundreds are reading your credentials St A, so that all may see Post Vatican II Modernism in the raw. It is no wonder you place your faith in scientific theories rathar than theological philosophy, you seem empty of Christian charity and humility. Tirelessly you monitor the threads ( over 6,000 posts) so that tradition is made look redundant with your intellectual and witty pride. That’s the problem with those blessed by God with wordly intelligence, the temptation to reject the simple faith, designed by God so that even little children could see only through belief in Him could one be saved. Well hopefully you have put up a marker for all to see, the two faces of Catholicism today, tradition and the Modernist takeover since Vatican II. Not for you the mystery of iniquity, or the very words of Christ Himself who taught the way to salvation and the Hell that awaits those that reject Him and His teaching. I as a Catholic am asked to believe a lot. I was never given the option to question the ‘ungenerous rules’ He insists on. Certainly I and many others have wondered at His words that tell us He will cast into Hell all those who do not believe in Him and His Church. If I reject the tenets of the Catholioc faith and believe something else, then that is how Christ said man would be judged and condemned. Who are we to question His decisions? Not for you that only a FEW find the path to Salvation as the Gospels teach, no, you want universal salvation as a new tenet of the Catholic faith. My God what foolish men and women were those who died rather than concede to universal salvation. I do not set the rules for heavenly admittance, Christ did, and very explicitly too. Shows how careful a Catholic must be coming on to forums like this and seeing the word Catholic put down as religion. It seems today’s Catholic means anthing from Catholic to pseudo-Catholic. You never lost the faith St A, I would say you never had it. Trouble is St A, you seem like a fellow who thinks he doesn’t need advice if the above is anything to go by. Tell you what, let us pray for each other, that God may correct our misunderstandings.
Finally, St A, a bit of advice, do not tempt the Lord thy God as you have done above.
T
tonyrey
Guest
Liberation from evil by Jesus is intelligible in any world!
S
StAnastasia
Guest
Perhaps they are.
I don’t place faith in science. My faith is in god, but I accept the cogency of scientific explanations of how God’s creation works.
I’m not sure what you mean by “redundant.” But I do know that theology is a living dialogue between communities of faith and the developing world in which they are embedded. Theologies that cannot be re-expressed in a contemporary idiom are rapidly
consigned to oblivio.
Faith is simple; the theology in which it is expressed is not.
You hope.
Did I say that? I’m just not as ready as you are to consign people to hell who believe differently than Catholics.
Of course I have it – I wouldn’t be Catholic without faith, would I?
S
StAnastasia
Guest
Which model do you favor?Liberation from evil by Jesus is intelligible in any world!
T
tonyrey
Guest
There is only one - that of Our Lord…
S
StAnastasia
Guest
Right – which model do you favor of how God “saves” through Jesus Christ?There is only one - that of Our Lord…
H
hecd2
Guest
It would be appreciated if you guys would take your off-topic carping about who is and isn’t a true Catholic and who is and isn’t going to be saved to a thread somewhere else. Buffalo, Ronnie and I had a good on-topic thing going about the uniqueness or otherwise of the earth for supporting advanced life and the whole thing’s been hijacked. The thread is about God and cosmology, dudes.
You guys crack me up - one of you thinks that the Church went wrong a couple of hundred years ago and that everyone who professes to be a Catholic today is a heretic (including this pope and popes for the last two hundred years) except him and about seven like-minded geocentric friends and the other one thinks that it doesn’t really matter what we believe. I know the RC is a broad church, but this is ridiculous. Entertaining as it is, it would be highly appreciated if you would conduct your soteriological spat elsewhere.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
You guys crack me up - one of you thinks that the Church went wrong a couple of hundred years ago and that everyone who professes to be a Catholic today is a heretic (including this pope and popes for the last two hundred years) except him and about seven like-minded geocentric friends and the other one thinks that it doesn’t really matter what we believe. I know the RC is a broad church, but this is ridiculous. Entertaining as it is, it would be highly appreciated if you would conduct your soteriological spat elsewhere.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
S
StAnastasia
Guest
Alec, this is a discussion forum for Catholic ideas. If you can’t see how cosmological questions are relevant to claims about salvation, I’m sorry for you. The theology of “salvation” is bound up with our cosmology, for if the rest of the universe has evolved intelligent life, traditional narrowly anthropocentric claims about how the death and resurrection of one divinely conceived member of Homo sapiens affects three hundred billion other galaxies goes out the window. Theology cannot be separated from the scientific and cultural context of those whose faith expresses that theology.
If you want to continue to argue ad infinitum about the OPs question, be my guest. As far as I’m concerned that matter was thoroughly hashed out many posts ago.
StAnastasia
R
ronnie_bonigli
Guest
StAnastasia, if we ***knew ***(i.e. had real evidence, contact for instance) that there were intelligent beings posessing free will somewhere else in the universe, then that would be something we had to consider in our theology. But we don’t know, and to just say that since the universe is really really big, there must be other intelligent beings posessing free will out there, is an unwarranted assumption. It might be a good assumption if the laws of the universe were ruled by blind chance, and the odds of other intelligent beings evolving were pretty good, merely due to the vast size of the universe, but if you believe in an omnipotent omniscient being who created the universe and all it’s laws ex nihilo and knew exactly how the infinite steps in the chain reaction of steps from the Big Bang on would proceed, then you shouldn’t just assume that the laws of probability would very likely result in other intelligent beings. Maybe there are, maybe there aren’t, if we ever have contact with some then maybe it’s time to revise some theology, but maybe an omnipotent omniscient God planned from the very begining for just one race of intelligent beings, He could do things that way.
T
tonyrey
Guest
I believe He saves us in various ways. He obeys His Father’s Will, shares our humanity, identifies Himself with us, enlightens us with His teaching, inspires us with His example, takes on the burden of our sins, helps us to resist our temptations, gives us new strength with His courage, shows us how to pray and forgive our enemies, intercedes for us, sacrifices Himself rather than others, refuses to become caught up in the vortex of evil and violence, nourishes us with His Body and Blood, liberates us with the power of His love and unites us to Himself with His Passion, Death and Resurrection…
There is no reason why He cannot redeem persons elsewhere in the universe. Whether He does so by becoming incarnate more than once or by some other means we cannot tell. Our limited intelligence cannot possibly compete with God’s wisdom and originality…
H
hecd2
Guest
Sheesh! That’s how threads should work - those who want to argue ad infinitum about the OP should be able to do so without the thread being hijacked and taken off-topic by people wanting to talk about something quite different. Those people should start a thread about soteriology or whatever subject they want to fight about. This thread was about what cosmology tells us about the special or ordinary status of human beings in the universe and about the evidence for just how special our situation is, which interests me. It might not interest you, but it interests me. Nothing to do with the conditions for salvation which started with your irrelevant anecdote about Hugh Ross’s interpersonal skills. You should start an EENS thread, or a “Do aliens have a saviour?” thread.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
S
StAnastasia
Guest
It’s no more an unwarranted assumption than is your assumption that our planet – out of the planets around 10\22 stars – is the only one on which life might have evolved.
Is this even a coherent formulation?
How does your assumption of an “omnipotent omniscient being” pass muster as a component of scientific methodology"?
That’s a lot of “maybe” you’ve injected into the scientific discussion.
C
cassini
Guest
I see your point hecd, and it can be annoying when the true intended subject of a thread is taken somewhere else. The trouble is, as St A has pointed out, the subject of cosmology is directly related to God, and God to His Son, and to His Church, and to the tenets of that Church to salvation.
God created His universe in a way that reflects knowledge of Him. What we are discussing is how did God create the universe so as to show pagans and today’s astheists that He exists and that He created it. If God both created the Universe and cares about humans, why did he make it so large? is the subject of the thread, and it is directly concerned with God, we human beings and the physical makeup of the cosmos.
Now you may find it ridiculous and absurd, but the doctrine of geocentrism was once considered one of the great treasures of the Catholic Church. Here is what the anti-Catholic Andrew White said of it in His book A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom,
White on the Doctrine of Geocentrism
‘This doctrine was of the highest respectability: it had been developed at a very early period, and had been elaborated until it accounted well for the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies; its final name, ‘Ptolemaic theory,’ carried weight; and, having thus come from antiquity into the Christian world, St Clement of Alexandria demonstrated that the altar in the Jewish Tabernacle was ‘‘a symbol of the earth placed in the middle of the universe’’: nothing more was needed; the geocentric theory was fully adopted by the Church and universally held to agree with the letter and spirit of Scripture.
Wrought into this foundation, and based upon it, there was developed in the Middle Ages, mainly out of fragments of Chaldean and other early theories preserved in the Hebrew Scriptures, a new sacred system of astronomy, which became one of the great treasures of the universal Church – the last word of revelation.
Three great men mainly reared this structure. First was the unknown who gave to the world the treatises ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite. It was unhesitatingly believed that these were the work of St Paul’s Athenian convert, and therefore virtually of St Paul himself. Though now known to be spurious, they were then considered a treasure of inspiration, and an emperor of the East sent them to an emperor of the West as the most worthy of gifts. In the ninth century they were widely circulated in Western Europe, and became a fruitful source of thought especially on the whole celestial hierarchy. Thus the old ideas of astronomy were vastly developed, and the heavenly hosts were classed and named in accordance with indications scattered through the sacred Scriptures.
The next of these three great theologians was Peter Lombard, Professor at the University of Paris. About the middle of the twelfth century he gave forth his collection of Sentences, or statements by the Fathers, and this remained until the end of the Middle Ages the universal manual of theology. In it was especially developed the theological view of man’s relation to the universe. The author tells the world: ‘‘Just as man is made for the sake of God – that is, that he may serve Him, - so the universe is made for the sake of man – that is, that it may serve him; therefore is man placed at the middle point of the universe, that he may both serve and be served.’’ The vast significance of this view, and its power in resisting any real astronomical science, we shall see, especially in the time of Galileo.
The great triad of thinkers culminated in St Thomas Aquinas – the sainted theologian, the glory of the mediaeval Church, the ‘Angelic Doctor,’ the most marvellous intellect between Aristotle and Newton ; he to whom it was believed that an image of the crucified had spoken words praising his writings. Large of mind, strong, acute, yet just – even more than just – to his opponents, he gave forth, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, his Cyclopaedia of Theology, the Summa Theologica. In this he carried the sacred theory of the universe to its full development. With great power and clearness he brought the whole vast system, material and spiritual, into its relations to God and man.
C
cassini
Guest
White continued:
Thus was the vast system developed by these three leaders of mediaeval thought; and now came the man who wrought it yet more deeply into European belief, the poet divinely inspired who made the system part of the world’s life. Pictured by Dante, the empyrean and the concentric heavens, paradise, purgatory, and hell, were seen by all; the God Triune, seated on his throne upon the circle of the heavens, as real as the Pope seated in the chair of St Peter; the seraphim, cherubim, and thrones, surrounding the Almighty, as real as the cardinals surrounding the Pope; the three great order of angels in heaven, as real as the three great orders, bishops, priests, and deacons, on earth; and the whole system of spheres, each revolving within the one above it, and all moving about the earth, subject to the primum mobile, as real as the feudal system of western Europe, subject to the Emperor.
Let us look into this vast creation – the highest achievement of theology – somewhat more closely. Its first feature shows a development out of earlier theological ideas. The earth is no longer a flat plain enclosed by four walls and solidly vaulted above, as theologians of previous centuries had believed it, under the inspiration of Cosmas; it is no longer a mere flat disk, with sun, moon, and stars hung up to give it light, as the earlier cathedral sculptors had figured it; it has become a globe at the centre of the universe. Encompassing it are successive transparent spheres, rotated by angels about the earth, and each carrying one or more of the heavenly bodies with it: that nearest the earth carrying the moon; the next, Mercury; the next, Venus; the next, the sun; the next three, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; the eighth carrying the fixed stars. The ninth was the primum mobile, and enclosing all was the tenth heaven, the Empyrean. This was immovable, a boundary between creation and the great outer void; and here, in a light which no one can enter, the Triune God sat enthroned, the ‘music of the spheres’ rising to Him as they moved. Thus was the old heathen doctrine of the spheres made Christian.
In attendance upon the Divine Majesty, thus enthroned, are vast hosts of angels, who are divided into three hierarchies, one serving in the empyrean, one in the heavens between the empyrean and the earth, and one on the earth. Each of these hierarchies is divided into three choirs, or orders; the first, into the orders of Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; and the main occupation of these is to chant incessantly – to ‘‘continually cry’’ the divine praises. The order of Thrones conveys God’s will to the second hierarchy, which serves in the movable heavens. This second hierarchy is also made up of three orders. The first of these, the order of Dominions, receives the divine commands; the second, the order of Powers, moves the heavens, sun, moon, planets, and stars, opens and shuts the ‘‘windows of heaven,’’ and brings to pass all other celestial phenomena; the third, the order of Empire, guards the others.
The third and lowest hierarchy is also made up of three orders. First of these are the Principalities, the guardian spirits of nations and kingdoms. Next come Archangels; these protect religion, and bear the prayers of the saints to the foot of God’s throne. Finally come Angels; these care for earthly affairs in general, one being appointed to each mortal, and others taking charge of the qualities of plants, metals, stones and the like. Throughout the whole system, from the great Triune God to the lowest group of angels, we see at work the mystic power attached to the triangle and sacred number three – the same which gave the triune deities in Egypt, and which transmitted this theological gift to the Christian world, especially through the Egyptian Athanasius.
Below the earth is hell. This is tenanted by the angels who rebelled under the lead of Lucifer, prince of the seraphim –the former favourite of the Trinity; but, of these rebellious angels, some still rove among the planetary spheres, and give trouble to the good angels; others pervade the atmosphere about the earth, carrying lightning, storm, drought, and hail; others infest earthly society, tempting men to sin; but Peter Lombard and St Thomas Aquinas take pains to show that the work of these devils is, after all, but to discipline man or to mete out deserved punishment.
All this vast scheme had been so riveted into the Ptolemaic view by the use of biblical texts and theological reasoning that the resultant system of the universe was considered impregnable and final. To attack it was blasphemy.
It stood for centuries. Great theological men of science like Vincent of Beauvais and Cardinal d’Ailly, devoted themselves to showing not only that it was supported by Scripture, but also that it supported Scripture. Thus was the geocentric theory embedded in the beliefs and aspirations, in the hopes and fears of Christendom down to the middle of the sixteenth century.’
Now all this, plus the Galileo case, which was the first challenge against the traditional interpretation of the Scriptures, may be BORING history to you, but formal heresy in the Catholic Church cannot be dismissed on scientific theories - as churchmen tried from 1741.
Thus was the vast system developed by these three leaders of mediaeval thought; and now came the man who wrought it yet more deeply into European belief, the poet divinely inspired who made the system part of the world’s life. Pictured by Dante, the empyrean and the concentric heavens, paradise, purgatory, and hell, were seen by all; the God Triune, seated on his throne upon the circle of the heavens, as real as the Pope seated in the chair of St Peter; the seraphim, cherubim, and thrones, surrounding the Almighty, as real as the cardinals surrounding the Pope; the three great order of angels in heaven, as real as the three great orders, bishops, priests, and deacons, on earth; and the whole system of spheres, each revolving within the one above it, and all moving about the earth, subject to the primum mobile, as real as the feudal system of western Europe, subject to the Emperor.
Let us look into this vast creation – the highest achievement of theology – somewhat more closely. Its first feature shows a development out of earlier theological ideas. The earth is no longer a flat plain enclosed by four walls and solidly vaulted above, as theologians of previous centuries had believed it, under the inspiration of Cosmas; it is no longer a mere flat disk, with sun, moon, and stars hung up to give it light, as the earlier cathedral sculptors had figured it; it has become a globe at the centre of the universe. Encompassing it are successive transparent spheres, rotated by angels about the earth, and each carrying one or more of the heavenly bodies with it: that nearest the earth carrying the moon; the next, Mercury; the next, Venus; the next, the sun; the next three, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; the eighth carrying the fixed stars. The ninth was the primum mobile, and enclosing all was the tenth heaven, the Empyrean. This was immovable, a boundary between creation and the great outer void; and here, in a light which no one can enter, the Triune God sat enthroned, the ‘music of the spheres’ rising to Him as they moved. Thus was the old heathen doctrine of the spheres made Christian.
In attendance upon the Divine Majesty, thus enthroned, are vast hosts of angels, who are divided into three hierarchies, one serving in the empyrean, one in the heavens between the empyrean and the earth, and one on the earth. Each of these hierarchies is divided into three choirs, or orders; the first, into the orders of Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; and the main occupation of these is to chant incessantly – to ‘‘continually cry’’ the divine praises. The order of Thrones conveys God’s will to the second hierarchy, which serves in the movable heavens. This second hierarchy is also made up of three orders. The first of these, the order of Dominions, receives the divine commands; the second, the order of Powers, moves the heavens, sun, moon, planets, and stars, opens and shuts the ‘‘windows of heaven,’’ and brings to pass all other celestial phenomena; the third, the order of Empire, guards the others.
The third and lowest hierarchy is also made up of three orders. First of these are the Principalities, the guardian spirits of nations and kingdoms. Next come Archangels; these protect religion, and bear the prayers of the saints to the foot of God’s throne. Finally come Angels; these care for earthly affairs in general, one being appointed to each mortal, and others taking charge of the qualities of plants, metals, stones and the like. Throughout the whole system, from the great Triune God to the lowest group of angels, we see at work the mystic power attached to the triangle and sacred number three – the same which gave the triune deities in Egypt, and which transmitted this theological gift to the Christian world, especially through the Egyptian Athanasius.
Below the earth is hell. This is tenanted by the angels who rebelled under the lead of Lucifer, prince of the seraphim –the former favourite of the Trinity; but, of these rebellious angels, some still rove among the planetary spheres, and give trouble to the good angels; others pervade the atmosphere about the earth, carrying lightning, storm, drought, and hail; others infest earthly society, tempting men to sin; but Peter Lombard and St Thomas Aquinas take pains to show that the work of these devils is, after all, but to discipline man or to mete out deserved punishment.
All this vast scheme had been so riveted into the Ptolemaic view by the use of biblical texts and theological reasoning that the resultant system of the universe was considered impregnable and final. To attack it was blasphemy.
It stood for centuries. Great theological men of science like Vincent of Beauvais and Cardinal d’Ailly, devoted themselves to showing not only that it was supported by Scripture, but also that it supported Scripture. Thus was the geocentric theory embedded in the beliefs and aspirations, in the hopes and fears of Christendom down to the middle of the sixteenth century.’
Now all this, plus the Galileo case, which was the first challenge against the traditional interpretation of the Scriptures, may be BORING history to you, but formal heresy in the Catholic Church cannot be dismissed on scientific theories - as churchmen tried from 1741.
R
ronnie_bonigli
Guest
StAnastasia, I’m really disappointed in those responses, are you just mailing it in? Let’s look at the four responses.
I never said earth IS definitely the only one on which life might have evolved. You just misrepresenting the jist of my entire post.
What’s “incoherent” about it? You seem to have been so immersed in the atheistic materialism that dominates much of the scientific community that you seem to be unaware that it is coloring your basic philosophy. In an atheistic worldview, all events in the world ARE ruled by blind chance, because there is nothing else behind them, no plan, no design, nothing. In a theistic worldview, even though all events may appear “random” to human beings, they are not random to the omnipotent omniscient God of Christian theology. God would know EXACTLY how the evolution of the universe would turn out from the Big Bang on to today/.
What’s that? How does my “assumption” of an omnipotent omniscient being pass muster as a component of scientific methodology? The WHOLE point of this thread is to “assume” that there IS a God behind the creation of the universe. A few posts back you said you believe in God and have faith. Now you want to act like you’re having a conversation on a secular scientific community forum? What’s that all about?
It’s called being open minded. Maybe there is life on another planet, because God wanted it there. Maybe there isn’t. But to just assume there is and then change your whole theology on an unsupported assumption is totally unwarranted.
S
StAnastasia
Guest
I’m not changing my theology. I’m saying that the assumption that earth is unique in the universe as a life-bearing planet is as unwarranted as the assumption that every star has a life -bearing planet. I would say more, but I fear bringing the wrath of Hec2d down on our heads!
- Status